Wu Chien-Lien was born on July 3, 1968 in Taipei. Inspired by Fame (USA 1980) - a movie that portrayed life in a performing arts school - she entered the Taipei National University of Art after finishing middle school. Wu earned tuition money during the summer through working at Rock Records, where she sang commercial jingles and back-up vocals. Around this time Sylvia Chang happened to come across an unglamourized, but striking photograph of her at the record company and sent it along to Johnnie To, who was casting for a new movie. That movie was, of course, the now classic A Moment of Romance (1990), which launched Wu into stardom across Asia and garnered her a HKFA Best New Artist nomination. Over the next few years Wu continued with her studies while appearing in few films here and there. In 1994, Wu’s busiest year by a huge margin, she was nominated for a HKFA Best Actress Award for her performance in the UFO horror film The Returning, appeared in Ang Lee's acclaimed Eat Drink Man Woman (TAIWAN 1994), and also made her debut as a singer.

Through many of her performances Wu has revealed a steely will and inner strength that belies her serene face and slender frame. Perhaps it is this quality that led to her being cast so effectively against type as cold-blooded killers in the Milkyway films Beyond Hypothermia (1996) and Intruder (1997). Her most acclaimed role to date is that of an ill-fated but determined young woman in Ann Hui's Eighteen Springs (1997), for which she garnered a HKFA Best Actress nomination and took home the Hong Kong Critics Society Best Actress Award. Wu has also won a Best Actress Award at the 3rd Changchun Film Festival for her performance in The Phantom Lover (1995). After a long
absence, Wu reappeared all-too-briefly again on the HK film horizon and was reunited with her Moment of Romance co-star Andy Lau for Jiang Hu (2004), in which she played his wife. She most recently took on the role of tragic 30's actress Ruan Ling-Yu in a Mainland TV series.

Wu comes across in interviews as a highly independent woman whose hobbies apparently include fixing plumbing and backpacking around the world by herself. To this
day, she continues to find work seemingly everywhere in Asia except her native home of Taiwan. Since 1998 Wu has worked in China, Singapore, and even in Korea, where many people still remember her fondly from A Moment of Romance. (Wu's Korean fans include heartthrob Won Bin, who publicly expressed his admiration for her during a 2003 promotional trip to Hong Kong.) In general, Wu has managed to keep a low profile and has avoided the usual celebrity relationship gossip for much of her career. She dated and was engaged to Taiwanese actor Tou Chung-Wah for over a decade before calling it quits in 2000. After a bit of a dry spell, Wu recently revealed that she has been seeing someone who works outside of the entertainment industry for over a year now. Though she admits that it is still too early in their relationship to discuss it, Wu has reportedly insisted that she has no intentions of retiring from acting after getting married. (Yinique 2006)